I am absolutely stunned that Slashdot's editors would give credibility to a completely false story, pushed by a paid industry PR professional. As Rugrat said,

The "article" is not an article, but a press release written by an employee of a public affairs company.

"Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company."

For a website that spends so much time and energy combating FUD from Microsoft, and the MPAA and RIAA, it is baffling that FUD that was paid for and is pushed by the oil industry would make the front page here.

Come on, Slashdot. You can do better.

For the last year or so, I've been happily using Debian, with a mixture of sources so I was stable, but current, just like nearly everyone who uses Debian.

Then I tried to upgrade or something insane like that, using aptitude, and the whole thing went tits up on me. No amount of cussing, kicking things, or actual tinkering with the software could save my machine.

I thought about asking for some advice in the Debian forums, or on one of the lists, until I ran out of fingers in my entire family tree to count the times someone said some variant of, "Shut up, noob! Your stoopid and not leet leik I am! Go back to Winblows! Ha! HA! HA!!!1"

Yeah. Guess I'm not venturing into those waters, so I figured I'd just have to grab my network install CD and start over (luckily, I set up /home on its own partition a long time ago, so if I fuck something up really bad, I don't lose all my porn very important data.

The day I planned to reinstall Debian, I read that Dapper Drake had been released, and everyone loved it so much, they totally wanted to marry it. A friend of mine, who is wise in the ways of science and the air speed velocity of unladen swallows has also been singing the praises of Ubuntu for a long, long time, so I grabbed a Live CD to see what all the fuss was about.

Holy shit. What an awesome bit of work it is! It's the first Linux distro to find every single bit of hardware on my old Sony Vaio desktop machine, including all the USB ports. It looked great, too, and was the most "Mac-like" Linux I've ever used.

I realize that a lot of you are mocking me right now, but listen for a second: I'm not interested in hacking on my kernel to make sure something is detected during boot, or modifying all sorts of settings in a text editor just so I can make the damn thing find my camera . . . and don't get me started about CUPS. I love technology, and I love and fully believe in "free" as in speech, and I'm grateful for free as in beer. But also really into "works," as in just does. And on my machine here, Dapper Drake just works, and it's awesome. This is the Linux distro that I can take to my parents, and to my friends who are drowning in a sea of FUD, and convince them that they don't really have to be part of the Borg if they don't want to.

And ultimately, I believe that has to be our goal if we're going to convince people to give Linux a real, serious try as an alternative to Windows. We need to be able to tell them, with confidence, "Put this CD in your machine, and give it a try. I think you'll like it, because it just works."

O Tanenbaum, O Tanenbaum
Your microk3rn3l rul3z!
O Tanenbaum, O Tanenbaum
Those m0n0lithic foolz!
They build a kernel all-in-one,
Where all the bugs can have free run.
O Tanenbaum, O Tanenbaum
Those Linux guys just drool. ;)

-cbiltcliffe

I have considered this at length. Having had this account for many years, and occasionally posted drunkenly, and sarcastically, and trollishly, I think it might be about time for me to move on to a new, clean account and sever all ties with this one. I shall bid my anonymous crazyphilman identity farewell, and let it fade into obscurity.

Consider this a sort of account suicide, while I move on to fresher pastures and start anew.

Last week I lost a wonderful mentor and friend, Prof. Emmett Leith. Prof. Leith was my research advisor and was going to be my dissertation committee chair in the PhD program in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan. Among academics, Prof. Leith is known for making holograms useful and ubiquitous by inventing the off-axis method of recording holograms--one could make a strong case that the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics, in addition to being awarded to Dennis Gabor for the invention of holography, should have been shared with Prof. Leith, Juris Upatnieks, and Yuri Denisyuk. Among those who met him--family, friends, students, and colleagues--he was known as a wonderful man. I feel extraordinarily privileged to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from Prof. Leith.

(Cross-posted to WWdN)

The final table of the 2005 World Series of Poker started at 4pm yesterday afternoon, and wasn't finished until just after 7am today. I'm not sure, but I think that's a record. I'd call Pauly to be sure, but something tells me he's crashed out until at least Sunday.

Two qualifiers from PokerStars made the final table, and one guy, who qualified using free play points, made it to the final two tables, finished in 13th place, and won $400,000. Not bad for a freeroll!

Speaking of Pauly and PokerStars, we're doing a charity tournament on Sunday in memory of Pauly's friend Charlie Tuttle:

Charlie is from Clarksville, Tennessee and he's a twenty-six year old music enthusiast who loves hanging out and playing poker with his friends. Charlie was dealt a bad hand in life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he has been battling this past year. A couple of weekends ago, he was hospitalized because two tumors in his chest pressed up against his lungs, causing him breathing problems. I don't have to tell you how serious his condition was.

Felicia Lee, who is fighting her own battle with cancer, knows several top professional poker players, so she got several of her friends to call Charlie: John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Max Pescatori, and Barry Greenstein to name a few. In fact, when Barry Greenstein won his bracelet in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, he dedicated it to Charlie.

As Pauly wrote:

Situations like this one make you reassess what's really important in life. Las Vegas is a city built on greed. Poker is a game that often attracts some of the lowest forms of life. However, in the past two weeks, there has been a small group of professional poker players who have earned my respect and admiration. Amidst all the darkness and debauchery, I have caught a few glimpses of the bright side of humanity. The hearts of some of the biggest sharks in Las Vegas are filled with compassion.

Thank you, Charlie, for inspiring us all. We'll never forget you.

Charlie passed away on June 22 and his friends have organized a charity poker tournament this Sunday at PokerStars. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope to see lots of WWdN readers there.

Details:

SUNDAY, JULY 17th
18:00 EDT (15:00 CDT)
PokerStars
Buy-in is $20 — all of it goes to charity.
"WPBT Charlie Tournament" under Tourneys -> Private tab in the lobby

I'm sure this is just begging for vandalism (unless those douchebags have grown up and finally kissed a girl) . . . but there is an error on my Wikipedia page that needs to be corrected. I'd do it myself, but that's against Wikipedia editing policy.

I am not in Brother Bear. Willie Wheaton, Wil Wheaton, Jr., and Reginald Maudling (Mrs.) are all not me. I've tried to get this taken off imdb, but someone (well-intentioned, I'm sure) keeps putting it back, and Wikipedia editors (also well-intentioned) are putting Brother Bear back up . . . so we're in an infinite improbability loop, and my towel is getting dirty.

Would someone please correct that, and cite this journal entry so it doesn't get corrected back?

Quick quiz, who is most responsible for the productivity gains of the 1990s Gordon Moore (Intel), Bill Gates (MS), Sam Walton (Walmart), or Jack Walsh (GE)?

The answer is Sam Walton, a recent study found that Wal-Mart accounted for half the productivity improvements over the last two decades. Most people don't think about something so decidedly low tech as retail being a big productivity gainer (and they didn't even install a ton of self serve checkouts to get it).

The odd thing is that while I would guess that Wal-Mart would attribute their gains in no small part to IT products, they don't spend a whole lot on them. Total equipment spending was ~$3 billion last year (including all equipment not just IT) which is pretty tiny compared to revenue ($250 billion), income ($9 billion), or any other measure of company size. Compare this to your company or even other retailers. Another example could be Dell. Their total capital spending was $300 million, that includes all of factories, R&D centers, cars, and servers. Obviously both companies use leases to reduce that number but even doubling those and you aren't coming anywhere near the $400 billion spent on IT in the US in 2003 (according to the BEA).

I guess my question is how come Walmart and dell can spend less than 1% of total technology spending but pull more than half of the productivity gains. I think most technology is sold as a productivity enhancement. That means that the remaining 99% of spending is being wasted on the other half of the productivity gains.

I have several questions as a result of this information:

What makes Dell & WalMart so much better at applying technology?
Is this the real answer to the recent article and book about Does IT really matter? (Perhaps it is not IT that matters so much but the abilty to apply IT that will continue to matter.)
Why do other managers continue to spend so heavily on IT?
After spending it what are the others missing that causes such small improvements?

Of course this is a great time to share your stories about PHBs who wasted a year's worth of budget on a server that remains underutilized and ineffective.
I have my own opinions about the answers (you saw the hints of it in my response to the second question, but I'd love to see what others thought and perhaps we can collectively improve our organizations' ability to improve their own IT spending productivity/cost ratio.

I just ran across this article today. So I thought I'd bring it up to anyone who might come across this journal. It is terribly unwise to keep an outsized portion of your savings in company stock, for two reasons. First you are not nearly diversified well enough. As an example, if you had two returns over 10 years, one gets 5%/year and the other an average of 7% with 25% std deviation (pretty low compared to big technology stock st deviations (MS had 54% stdev over the last 14 years)). I used 43%, -15%, 35%, -17%, -10%, 25%, 20% -15% -20% and 25%. Which do you think results in the most money after 10 years?
The 5% return. The negative returns throw you further from the geometric mean [nth root of the product of(1+rn)] your geometric return is only 4.5% for the second set of returns. That and the application of correllation to returns is the basis of modern portfolio theory.
The second reason is that if something bad happens to the company you lose your job and your nest egg if it is entirely in company stock.
So, ASAP you should go log into your 401k administrator's [plan sponsors] page (or call if they are out of date) and find out what you are invested in, and speak with a professional (or do some research yourself) on how to allocate your assets to assure you a more prosperous retirement.
That is all, enjoy your weekend, but please go look at your 401k on monday.

I just got back from Starsky and Hutch.

Surprisingly funny. I bet the DVD will be great.

Best part was how anyone in the theatre under 30 didn't get about 70% of the best jokes.

Now I'm hoping that they'll make a CHiPs movie. I wonder what other late 70s to early 80s TV shows would translate well into movies?

Oh, and if you're not watching TRIO every night, you're really missing out on some fantastic television.

There's no "Ask Slashdot" topic available for user journals, but I am intrigued by this reader's question, and I thought it was worth a try to tap into the collective wisdom of Slashdot.

Hi Wil,

you mentioned some time ago in your blog that you did a presentation on writing your book(s) using open source tools. Have you posted these slides (or whatever the medium was) anywhere?

I'm asking as I am about to embark on a writing project that will be north of 80,000 words (assuming I get past the 5,000 word 'pain barrier' that killed me last time) and recent experience with M$ Word has, quite frankly, scared the bejaysus out of me.

Anyways, if you get this it would be great to see you share some of your experiences using OSS to write.

thanks
Conrad

[1]http://www.wilwheaton.net/mt/archives/001401.php

I replied:

Hi Conrad,

Sadly, I didn't use any slides . . . that's *way* over my level of preparation for anything I do.

My talk pretty much focused on how I used OpenOffice.org to compose and edit my two current books, and what some of the pitfalls were.

I can summarize briefly for you: OO.o is a fantastic word processing suite, and did everything that I needed it to do. I was particularly impressed by the "stylist" in OO.o, which exists, I think, because they use some sort of XML-ish language behind the scenes. The stylist allowed me to assign something similar to "classes" to diffferent areas of my text, and was extremely useful in the design of "Just A Geek."

The only time I ran into an annoying limitation was moving to and from the .doc format, because OO.o and MSWord don't play nicely in regards to formatting. I worked around this by using .rtf format, when I needed to send my work out to other people (for notes and stuff). There were a few limitations in formatting, but they were purely aesthetic and didn't affect the actual data in any way.

I briefly looked at Abiword and KOffice, and found them both to be well-written and stable, but they were far more limited than OO.o.

In terms of just putting together a manuscript without regard to formatting, you could work very easily with Kwrite, or Kate, the same way that many other writers use BBEdit on the Mac.

When I finally had a finished product that I liked, I used OpenOffice.org to print to a .ps file, then used the ps2pdf13 command line tool to convert it into a .pdf document, which I sent to my printer. I understand that the newest version of OO.o has a very robust built-in pdf converter which makes that extra step unnecessary. I should also point out that converting files to .pdf on *nix always results in smaller filesizes than if you'd done it on a Mac or Windows platform. Hooray for us.

I'll post this e-mail to my Slashdot journal (CleverNickName) and maybe some of the Slashdotters will have good advice of their own to share with us.

Best of luck with your novel. Just go one scene at a time, and you'll be past 5K words before you know it!

Wil

My presentaton was pretty much limited to "I like this, I don't like this, and this thing was cool." I didn't have the time to get into a 1:1 comparison among all the different Open Source word processing suites. Do Slashdotters have any comments or suggestions? I find myself using Kate more and more when I compose weblog entries or shorter columns for magazines and the like. I occasionally use Abiword to compose and format letters and fax covers when time is a factor (Abiword loads much faster than OpenOffice.org.)

If you haven't seen them yet, you might want to check out the Linux server numbers that IDC released late last week. A few things I found notable: Linux servers went up in price (quartly unit growth was well below revenue growth) compare this to the other types of systems which all declined. Also Linux servers now account for almost 10% of server revenues, so far it looks like it hasn't really taken share from Windows servers rather sapped the growth that Windows systems would have taken from Unix. My queries are do you think the price increases came from the high end IBM machines that have Linux installed? Second, the next 10% (likely to come over the next two or three years) do you think it will come more from Unix systems or Windows systems? Anyone else have some observations from about the server market to enighten us?

Here's the first topic. Sorry if this one is a bit technical, I'm thinking that in the future they will be more like the Oracle Peoplesoft deal, but this has been on my mind for some time. Feel free to suggest other ideas in the comments.
I've been thinking about exchange rates a ton lately. Especially the Euro. Here's my deep, dark fear: the Euro replaces the US dollar as a primary financial value store. I don't think this will happen soon, but over the next decade or two. Here are the concerns. Huge trade deficit, with no real expectation that it will decline, medicare scaryness, and an administration (unlikely to change no matter who wins the election) that is happy with deficit spending to keep the economy growing, and increasingly investory friendly European capital markets. If I'm a rich fellow outside of both the US and Europe, I'd certainly prefer to have my investments there than here. I realize that Asian central banks have a vested interest in this game, but how long can they ignore generally much better currency adjusted returns?
If you have any thoughts (or even flames) please feel free to reply.

First off, if you've never seen Weebl & Bob you might want to check them out. They are a bit offbeat, but anyone who likes Mr. Scruff can't be all bad.
After that is out of the way, if you are reading this it is likely that you have read my posts and know that I'm an investment analyst. I keep returning to the conclusion that /., has a healthy group of other business minded folks. I've tried to nab as friends those who show an investor mindset, along a bunch of with other interesting viewpoints. Anyway, it seems like there have been more than a few market related articles over the past few weeks, and I was wondering if others would be intersted in joining in ad hoc market focused discusion with me. So if you are game keep reading my journal, I'll post on the market news with primarily tech companies and we can engage in discussion. I have had a chance to read everything from the sell side and found that the smart folks here are much faster and better than anyone on the street.
For anyone intimdated my econ or financial topics, feel free to ask questions. I will try to help in any way I can. I probably can't give any speciific advice about S&P companies but anything else is largely fair game.
On to the serious stuff this is meant to be an educational forum, not an advice forum. I will do my best to keep the discusion off invstment ideas, toward more general ideas, but if you invest in something mentioned here without any further due dillegence, YOU ARE A FOOL, and you are not going to sue me or other posters.
Now that such formalities are out of the way, break out the champange and caviar, hopefully this wil become the new capitalist's forum.

You made the top ten list!

No PointsName Hp [max]
1 20342 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in Sokoban on level 6 [max 9].
Killed by an owlbear. - [79]
2 15917 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 12.
Killed by a xan. - [68]
3 4171 Morc-Wiz-Orc-Mal-Cha died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 6.
Killed by a water elemental. - [59]

It's cold comfort to be three fucking rocks away from beating Sokoban, only to have a fucking OWLBEAR show up out of nowhere, and whack 70 fucking hit fucking points right off you in one fucking turn.

Gods, I love this fucking game. >:-)